Sunday, July 14, 2024
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After working from Seattle on Monday, I took the overnight flight back to DC. I slept for maybe 4 hours on the 5 hour flight, navigated my way out of the airport, and took the metro back to DC. I worked from my dorm for the rest of Tuesday, and even though I was exhausted, I went to trivia night with everybody! Historically, I am not a super strong trivia player (unless it is science related, and even then it’s kinda iffy). Still, I think we did better this time (and there was no Shrek involved)!
I went into the Maryland office on Wednesday and experienced the final editing processes for the I&E section in the August edition (which has a little piece by me in it)! Working at PT entails the research and writing of your own pieces, as well as the proofreading and assessment of others’ work. With less than four weeks to go until our final presentations, I began brainstorming for my presentation title and abstract, and started to lay out a rough outline of a slideshow. I also finished up my first draft of the precision gravity piece and got some feedback to work through! I was back in the DC office on Friday, and “pitched” an article for the upcoming News stories (I say “pitched” in quotes because it was really more of me describing what I was already writing, rather than trying to convince others that it was a good topic). I hope to refine the gravity piece more next week and begin working in earnest on the physics olympiad piece as well.
At some point, Jenna and I went grocery shopping. Trader Joe’s left me heartbroken, as their freezers were malfunctioning, so I couldn’t get any of the frozen stuff that I wanted (which happened to be a good amount this week). I will try my luck again next week. On Friday night, we went to happy hour at a pub, and I once again felt the sadness of a 20-year-old who gets mozzarella sticks instead of a drink (the mozzarella sticks were good, though, so I wasn’t actually that distraught).
My boyfriend had a great idea: we should start a server in Minecraft while we are doing long-distance. After multiple hours of frustratingly trying to download the correct launchers and mods onto my computer, we finally played a little bit Friday night. Of course, one can never play just “a little bit” of Minecraft. I woke up bright and early on Saturday (noon) and we played just a little more Minecraft (we played until 9 PM). I think my real calling in life is to be a virtual farmer. One of the mods we added introduces dozens of new crops and cooking recipes into the game, which will give me lots to explore.
We went to Sandy Point Beach in Maryland on Sunday! On the ride there and back, Charles, Kai, and I tortured each other (and Reidyn and Kaden) with delightful tunes (the new Ke$ha song, the Nickelback Rockstar Sea Shanty, Chug Jug With You). Luckily, we also discovered our mutual taste for Maneskin, so it wasn’t all torture. Thanks to my persistence in applying sunscreen to my face, my face is not sunburnt. Unfortunately, my persistence ended with my face, so the rest of me is quite sunburnt. I wasn’t sure what sort of beach this was going to be. I am used to Lake Tahoe at home, where it can be burning hot out but the water will still be under 50 degrees, so I wasn’t sure if I would actually want to go swimming. The water was actually the perfect temperature! I felt like a fish! I’ve never been to the beach with such a large group of people before, so I learned how to play some football-beach games like Monkey in the Middle.
Out of the water, I read a little bit of Agatha Christie, then gave up and fell asleep on my towel. I was woken up by the patter of rain as a big storm came in on the beach. Eventually, the lifeguards made the call to close the beach and we all headed back to the cars. My car hit Applebees on the way back to the dorms (which was actually not as bad as I remembered it being, but definitely still not good). Promptly upon my arrival to the dorm, I was called back into action in the Minecraft server. More farming work was done. I made sushi in Minecraft.
Playing video games is not quite the same as spending time with each other in person, but I am beyond grateful that we are able to play together and talk as much as we want. I am starting to realize that I will be living on my own in less than a month (without my family and friends as I have been in DC, but also without the other interns), and it makes me a little anxious.
See you next week.
Sonja Boettcher